A suicide bomber detonated explosives on a crowded city bus in Jerusalem this morning, killing 20 people, injuring over 40. Many of the people on the bus were schoolchildren. Meanwhile, a Palestinian human rights group is reporting Israeli forces have killed over 90 Palestinians in the last 40 days alone. Ten of those killed were under 18 years old. Meanwhile, CNN founder Ted Turner says Israelis and Palestinians are both terrorizing each other. In an interview with the London Guardian, Turner said, “The Palestinians are fighting with human suicide bombers; that’s all they have. The Israelis, they’ve got one of the most powerful military machines in the world. I would make the case both sides are involved in terrorism.”

The Washington Post is reporting the Bush administration’s effort to track so-called terrorist assets has been hobbled by interagency turf battles and the fact that most of al-Qaeda’s money is not in banks but in untraceable commodities. Long before September 11, al-Qaeda operatives began shifting money out of bank accounts that could be traced and into untraceable gold and precious stones. The move went largely unrecognized, and now most of the organization’s financial network remains untouched. At the same time, the effort has been hindered by interagency turf battles. Some of the worst conflicts have been between the Customs Service within the Treasury Department and the FBI’s financial review group within the Justice Department. They have nearly identical investigative missions but have been so resistant to cooperation that, until recently, they would not even fill designated chairs at each other’s tables.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that police officers seeking to search and question passengers on public buses do not have to tell them they have the right to refuse to cooperate. The court agreed with the Bush administration that police officers did not violate the constitutional ban on unreasonable searches and seizures when they arrested two men after asking to search them and finding drugs during a random check for weapons and drugs aboard a Greyhound bus.

The Federation of American Scientists is suing the CIA to get the government to disclose how much money it’s spending on intelligence operations this year. FAS spokesperson Steven Aftergood said the government’s release of the single classified number cannot damage national security. Intelligence spending is widely estimated to exceed $30 billion this year.

Afghan Grand Council Chair Ismail Qasim Yar today offered a blueprint for Afghanistan’s new legislature. He says the new body will include representatives from each province, as well as delegates to the Loya Jirga itself. But it’s unclear how the representatives will be chosen. U.S.-backed Afghan President Hamid Karzai infuriated delegates yesterday when he announced he’ll select his own cabinet and that delegates will not be allowed to choose the new parliament.

Powerful Islamic fundamentalists have launched a fierce attack on the women’s affairs minister, Sima Samar. The attack accuses her of blasphemy, labels her “Afghanistan’s Salman Rushdie” and demands she be given “appropriate punishment,” which under Sharia law means death. The attack appears as a front-page headline in a weekly newspaper published by former Afghan President Rabbani. Samar’s deputy women’s minister confronted Rabbani just days ago, demanding an explanation for the rape and murder of countless women under his rule.

Hundreds of troops took control of Peru’s second-largest city Monday after the government imposed a state of emergency to squash protests against the privatization of two electric companies. The government banned public protests and suspended constitutional guarantees for 30 days. They’re concerned about layoffs, the protesters are, and increased electricity bills. Police violently dispersed crowds in the city of Arequipa over the weekend, killing a university student.

Enron has revealed it paid its team of 144 senior managers over $700 million in cash and stock in the year leading up to its bankruptcy. That’s average pay of more than $5 million for each executive. The figures were disclosed in a 1,400-page filing with the federal bankruptcy court in New York. The news has infuriated former workers and shareholders, who accuse the managers of raiding Enron’s coffers at their expense. They say that Enron lied about the amount of money, admitting only $100 million to top executives. In fact, that’s what Ken Lay, the former CEO, received alone. The amount of money that Enron did not admit to, the more than $700 million, means that when Enron workers negotiated severance packages just in the last week, it was based on a figure a seventh of what they had originally been told about how much the executives made.

The New York Times is reporting educators and law enforcement authorities say that when teachers are accused of sexual abuse, districts often agree to keep quiet if the teacher agrees to move on.